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Wisconsin’s next fight: Recall reform

The bone-deep fatigue resulting from recent recall campaigns has Wisconsin legislators thinking about the next frontier in recall politics: Reforming the recall process.

It seems like an easy call, considering exit polls that showed 60 percent of voters thought recalls were only appropriate in cases of misconduct and another 10 percent believed they were never appropriate.

As you might expect from a deeply polarized state though, Republican and Democratic lawmakers are already divided over what kind of reforms ought to be made.

Both Republicans and Democrats agree the aspect of the recall law that allows targets to raise unlimited amounts of campaign cash needs to be changed. But Republicans also say the law should also be limited to cases of criminal or unethical behavior.

And legislative leaders said this week that while there is momentum for change, there is little bipartisan agreement about exactly what to do, and when to do it.

"I think it's a good idea, but I don't see us coming back in before the next session to deal with it," said Senate Republican Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. "And even then, I wonder if this passion for changing that law will remain. These things tend to lose steam the farther you get away from them."

The already hardening divide reflects just how hard it is to return to normalcy after the state’s civil war. And it’s not just the political class that's split in this case. The exit polls reflected a deep chasm between GOP and Democratic voters over the propriety of recalls – 68 percent of those who said recalls were only appropriate for cases of official misconduct voted for Gov. Scott Walker in the June 5 recall while 90 percent of those who said recalls were appropriate for any reason voted for Democrat Tom Barrett.